Saving Schrödinger's Cat

Coffee and Progress

During the time I lived in Hawaii I came to appreciate the simultaneously bold and delicate flavors of Hawaiian-grown coffee beans and would spend a lot of free time in a coffee shop with a particular roasting method that brought Kona to Mt. Olympus-levels of coffee perfection. The shop had a hulking, iron, 1950’s-era mechanical roaster right in the middle of the shop, which was tended by an Italian expatriate who would tend to the beans with his giant aluminum paddle, turning them over and over while I sipped my espresso in caffeine-fueled bliss.

He was a pleasant young guy, in his twenties. I got to know him from my frequent visits and found out that he was from a family of old-world coffee roasters, plying the skills that had been passed down through generations. It certainly showed in the quality of the shop’s brew. One day, he tried to recruit me as an apprentice. He was preparing to go back to Italy and didn’t want to leave the shop without a roaster. I declined as I already had a job. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted by the prospect of learning the ancient Italian arts from a master roaster. Eventually, I had to leave Hawaii for other destinations, but I never forgot that shop.

Years later, I returned to the islands, and the shop was still there. But gone was the old behemoth of a roasting machine, and the Italian roaster along with it. Instead, I saw behind the counter a bank of high-tech computer-controlled roasters, rotating silently away as they turned green coffee beans into the vehicles of earthy aroma I had come to love. The coffee tasted the same as I remembered, but in this case, the results were achieved through the wizardry of digitally-controlled machines, rather than the gentle hand of a classically-trained roasting artist. As I sipped my espresso, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. The master roaster was obsolete. The coffee shop didn’t need him anymore.

This was my first experience witnessing an artist being rendered obsolete by technology. Since then, we’ve seen the rise of art created by Artificial Intelligence systems like Midjourney and DALL-E. I’ve seen the creations coming from these systems and have grudgingly come to admit that they are aesthetically pleasing. The technology has only gotten better.

So, what does that mean to us as writers? Systems like Chat-GTP are being used to create stories. At the moment, AI-generated stories are laughably bad, but like the visual art generators, the technology will probably improve. Will it be competition for us? Recently, Clarkesworld Magazine had to shut down submissions because they were being flooded with AI-generated stories. While this was undoubtedly a get-rich-quick scheme by someone or someones, how long until the technology improves to the point of its creations being indistinguishable from human creations?

One of the best definitions of art I’ve seen is this: “Art is generally understood as any activity or product done by people with a communicative or aesthetic purpose—something that expresses an idea, an emotion or, more generally, a world view.” I’m not going to go into the ethics of AI or at what point a machine is considered a person. However, it’s worth exploring the process of creation, and how it fits into the whole AI debate. Art is communication of a kind, from one person to another. It’s a way for those experiencing the art to see into the heart of the artist. But if the art is being created by a soulless machine, is it art? If the inspiration is only being felt on one side, does it count?

It all comes down to the creative process. I’m not saying that we can’t be inspired by something that humans were not involved in creating. We can be inspired by the sight of a mountain or the ocean, after all. But no one would call those things “art,” unless they are trying to attribute them to a divine being.

If you take into account the people who coded the AI, or even the individuals who gave the AI its prompts, they are too far removed from the creative process to be considered artists. To me, punching a few keywords into an AI, and then calling yourself an “artist” when it spits something out is like pitching a novel idea to Stephen King, and then calling yourself a co-author to whatever he writes.

In my opinion, AI-generated “art” is not art. AI is a black box with an impenetrable process, and until AI can communicate its self-awareness, pass the Turing test, or do whatever the experts in these things say it must do to be considered sapient, I would have to put AI “art” in the category of aesthetically pleasing objects, like the aforementioned mountain. Without a distinctive artist involved, our enjoyment of it only gets it halfway there. Experience it if you will, but realize that there is nothing at the other end of that experience.

In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy my coffee, despite it no longer being art.